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["Debt Free BC" Finance minister says lower tax rate necessary because 'the market's changed.' I missed this story from a week ago in the enormous flood of no coverage whatsoever that it received. *RON*]

The British Columbia government has slashed in half the amount of revenue it expects to receive from a proposed liquefied natural gas industry since the February 2014 budget.

The BC Liberal government had previously promised LNG revenues would be used to create a prosperity fund that could be used to fund goals such as eliminating the provincial sales tax. Premier Christy Clark ran in the 2013 election with a "Debt Free B.C." slogan premised on building an LNG industry.

"The amounts of money are still significant," finance minister Michael de Jong told reporters in a briefing ahead of the bill's introduction in the legislature this afternoon. "If it tak…

A security expert says Canadians should be on guard when it comes to their own government after Wednesday's attack in Ottawa, which left a soldier and a gunman dead, two days after another assault with a car killed a soldier in Quebec.

Wednesday's attack came on a day when proposed legislation giving Canadian authorities new powers to track terrorists was expected to be tabled in the House of Commons.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was not 20 minutes into his speech after Parliament reopened on Thursday morning before mentioning that organizations like the Canadian Security Intelligence …

Canada and the world were shocked this week by the brazen shooting of a Canadian soldier at our National War Memorial and an armed assault on our seat of government. These tragic events cry out for immediate and drastic action to ensure this never happens again. And based on what we know so far, the most effective intervention would be to invest in support for those dealing with mental illness, addiction and poverty.

The gunman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was not part of a well-resourced terrorist organization or Islamic sleeper cell. Immediately before the shooting, he was living in an Ottawa homeless shelter. He apparently had a long history of addiction and mental illness. In 2012 he asked a B.C. judge to send …

Click here to view the original article.[With stress tests in the great majority of European banks showing positive results, it is now safe to get more liquidity into economies. *RON*] , 27 October 2014
The European Central Bank (ECB) has just released its finds from the latest round of so-called stress tests carried out on banks to ensure that there is sufficient backing in terms of liquidity and assets. The tests, based on their balance sheets at the end of 2013, were necessary to try and prevent a banking crisis as the one that had occurred five years ago at the height of the financial meltdown. Then, lax oversight, poor governance, poor asset quality and a reliance on over-priced real estate portfolios that suddenly crashed — along with a lack of actual liquidity — led to governments being forced to bail out banks and prop up the asset-based financial system. It caused shock waves globally, destroyed economies nationally and undermined the fledgling euro as a currency. And it is a …